Psychologists Say Couples Have To Make It Through This Stressful Phase To Have A Healthy Marriage

It's a phase marked by
"intense feelings of
attraction and ecstasy," Scientific American writes. You idealize
your partner, everything is easy and effortless, you love, and
you feel loved in return. Your similarities are limitless, and
your differences are celebrated.

"But then life happens," says
relationship psychologist Peter Pearson. "You start living with
somebody, and the differences you didn't see when you lived
separately and only saw each other on your best behavior begin to
show up."

Friction begins. Your tolerance
level for messiness might be different from your partner's, or
they might have a different way of relating to time from yours.
It turns out that you don't have "one life," nor are you "one
unit." You are indeed two separate individuals.

Differentiation is the
process of dealing with that unavoidable fact.

In another interview, Pearson's wife and
Couples Institute cofounder Ellyn Bader described how the
high-tension phase of differentiation works:

People have to come to terms with the reality that "we really are
different people. You are different from who I thought you were
or wanted you to be. We have different ideas, different feelings,
different interests."

Differentiation has two components. There is
self-differentiation: "This is who I am and what I want." This
refers to the development of an independent sense of self: to
know what I want, think, feel, desire ...

The second involves differentiation from the
other. When this is successful, the members of the
couple have the capacity to be separate from each other and
involved at the same time.

While it's part of a "healthy evolution" of a relationship,
Pearson says, differentiation certainly doesn't feel good at
first. It's a long process of working through differences and
bringing up when those differences are bugging you.

Pearson gives an example from earlier in his and Bader's
marriage. Bader has always been neater than he is, and that
difference started showing itself when they were living together;
he often left his shoes and newspapers in
disarray.

In such a situation, you need some very careful questions.
When your wife tells you that you're a slob, instead of getting
defensive, you need to get inquisitive.

"Curiosity is counterintuitive," Pearson says. It's
important to ask precise, thoughtful questions, like: How
does my being a slob affect you? How much of a slob am I on your
slob scale? When I leave things out, what does that symbolize
toyou?

Pearson says three qualities will help you get there:
patience, curiosity, and a willingness to tolerate tension. You
need to have patience with yourself and your partner, because
there are going to be some stumbles. You need to be curious,
because that's how you begin to understand who your partner is as
an individual. And you need to tolerate tension, because things
get tense when you bring up differences.

But when you make it to the other side, you'll have a more
resilient, mature relationship. Like Bader says, you can be
separate from each other — and involved at the same
time.